Devices and Desires by K. J. Parker Page A

yawned.
    “You’re wasting my time,” he said. “You don’t even know these people, and you’re asking me to believe they all came round
     to your house, these important men you’ve never met, to see this mechanical doll you were making for your kid.”
    “I’m telling you the truth,” Ziani said.
    “Balls.” The man wriggled himself comfortable in his chair. “I don’t believe you.”
    “You agreed to see me.”
    “So I did. Know why?”
    Ziani shrugged. “I’m prepared to sign a deposition,” he said. “Or I’ll testify in court, if you’d rather.”
    “No chance. I know for a fact you wouldn’t know these people if you met them in the street. You didn’t have any accomplices,
     you were working alone. All I want from you is who put you up to this. Oh, your pal Falier Zenonis, sure; but he’s nobody.
     Who else is in on it?”
    Ziani sighed. There was nothing left inside him. “Who would you like it to have been?”
    “No.” The man shook his head. “If I want to play that sort of game, I decide when and how. You’re here because obviously some
     bugger’s been underestimating me.”
    “All I wanted,” Ziani said, “was for my wife to get my pension. That’s all that matters to me. I’ll say whatever you like,
     so long as you give me that.”
    “Not interested.” The man sounded bored, maybe a little bit annoyed. “I think you thought the idea up for yourself, all on
     your own. Trying to be clever with men’s lives. You can forget that.”
    “I see,” Ziani said. “So you won’t do what I asked, about the pension?”
    “No.”
    “Fine.” Ziani jumped to his feet and threw his weight against the edge of the desk, forcing it back. The man tried to get
     up; the edge of the desk hit the front of his thighs before his legs were straight — a nicely judged piece of timing, though
     Ziani said it himself — and he staggered. Ziani shoved again, then hopped back to give himself room and scrambled on to the
     desktop. The man opened his mouth to yell, but Ziani reached out; not for the throat, as the man was expecting, and so Ziani
     was able to avoid his hands as he lifted them to defend himself. Instead, he grabbed the man’s shoulders and pushed back sharply.
     It was more a folding maneuver than anything else. The man bent at the waist as he went down, and his head, thrown backward,
     smashed against the stone sill of the window. It worked just as Ziani had seen it in his mind, the angles and the hinges and
     the moving parts. Seventeen years of looking at blueprints teaches you how to visualize.
    He was only mildly stunned, of course, so there was still plenty to do. Ziani had been hoping for a weapon; a dagger slung
     fashionably at the waist, or something leaning handy in a corner. Nothing like that; but there was a solid-looking iron lampstand,
     five feet tall, with four branches and four legs at the base to keep it steady. Just the thing; he slid off the desk, caught
     hold of the lamp-stand more or less in the middle, and jabbed with it, as though it was a spear. One of the legs hit the man
     on the forehead, just above the junction of nose and eyebrows. It was the force behind it that got the job done.
    The man slid onto the floor; dead or alive, didn’t matter, he was no longer relevant. Three flights of stairs, and Ziani had
     counted the steps, made a fairly accurate assessment of the depth of tread. It would be a long way down from the window and
     he had no idea what he’d be dropping onto; but he was as good as dead anyway, so what the hell? At the moment when he jumped,
     entrusting himself to the air without looking at what was underneath, he couldn’t stop himself wondering about Falier, who
     was supposed to be his friend.
    It wasn’t pavement, which was good; but it was a long way down.
    For a moment he couldn’t breathe and his legs were numb. I’ve broken my bloody neck, he thought; but then he felt pain, pretty
     much everywhere, which suggested the